Alliancea treaty between nations, or between individuals, for their mutual advantage. Abraham formed an alliance with some of the Canaanitish princes...
Divination [N] [T] [E] [S]Communication with a deity for the purpose of determining the deity's knowledge, resulting in clarification of a decision or...
Cloud, Cloud of the Lord The Old Testament. The Literal Cloud. Natural phenomena involving clouds are depicted occasionally in the Old Testament, but ...
Lie, Lying To practice deceit, falsehood, and treachery either by word or action. It is the exact opposite of truth. The sanctity of truth is fundamen...
Widow [N] [S]Married woman whose husband has died and who remains unmarried. The Hebrew word translated widow is almana [hn'm.l; ], and it occurs fift...
Prayer [N] [T] [B] [S]is converse with God; the intercourse of the soul with God, not in contemplation or meditation, but in direct address to him. Pr...
Presence of God The Scriptures often speak of God's presence in human history. The most common Hebrew term for presence is panim [yIn'P], which is als...
New Heavens and a New Earth The idea of new heavens and a new earth is explicitly noted in Isaiah 65:17; 66:22; 2pe 3:13; and Revelation 21:1. The Old...
Providence of God The word providence comes from the Latin providentia (Gk. pronoia [provnoia]) and means essentially foresight or making provision be...
False Prophet Even though the Old Testament does not use the term false prophet, it is clear that such professional prophets existed throughout much ...
Destroy, Destruction Destroy in the Bible usually refers to violent action causing physical death ( Num 16:33 ; Psalm 2:12 ; Heb. abad [d;b'a]). But ...
Religion [N]Due to the wide range of its usage, the English word religion (from Lat. religio) is not easily defined. Most commonly, however, it refers...
Leadership [N]The Old Testament. In the earliest days of the Old Testament, leadership of the people of God was by the family head or patriarch, to wh...
MATTHEW. CHAPTER XXIII. The Last Appeal to Israel. SUMMARY.--The Scribes and Pharisees in Moses' Seat. The Burdens They Imposed. Their Eagerness ...
Joel, Theology of The Book of Joel has been dated by conservative scholars from the ninth to the fifthcenturies b.c.: more recent scholars tend to dat...
Amos, Theology of Like all biblical prophets, Amos spoke the oracles of Yahweh, Israel's God, to people in a particular context. In order to comprehen...
Elder [N] [E] [S]In both the Old and New Testaments, the term elder indicates one of advanced age (Heb. zaqen [eqz]; Gk. presbyteros [presbuvtero]) wh...
Sanctification [N] [T] [E]The generic meaning of sanctification is the state of proper functioning. To sanctify someone or something is to set that pe...
Church, the [T] Definition of the Church. The New Testament word for church is ekklesia [ejkklhsiva], which means the called out ones. In classical Gr...
Forgiveness [N]Terminology. There are several Hebrew terms equivalent to the English to forgive, as defined below. The three most common are verbs (u...